A Military Moe show features cute girls in the military, or in military-like situations (Girls und Panzer, for example, is about tank combat as a high school sport). It will often feature Good-Looking Privates both on the battlefield and in their personal lives, juxtaposing the two in whatever way best fits the tone of the story, whether dramatically, saddeningly or comically. Expect varying levels of Fanservice. Usually a World of Action Girls.
It can be divided into two styles: One where the Moe girls operate the equipment (Girls und Panzer, The Magnificent Kotobuki), and one where the girls are the equipment (KanColle, Upotte!!)
See Small Girl, Big Gun, which many characters are likely to sport in some fashion. Sister Trope of Girls with Guns. Sub-Trope of Cute Girls Doing Cute Things.
Note: This trope describes a show, not a character. Individual characters may fall under Good-Looking Privates.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Arpeggio of Blue Steel is about the mysterious Fleet of Fog and their Mental Models, human female avatars of World War II era warships armed with advanced weapons and technology where they rule the oceans.
- Girls' Frontline (or Doll's Frontline) is the anime of the Girls' Frontline video game, featuring female androids who are anthropomorphized guns.
- Girls' Last Tour is a Downplayed example. Chito and Yuuri wear what look like military uniforms and helmets, Yuuri has a rifle, and they ride in a Kettenkrad half-track motorcycle, but they aren't actually part of any military, and the story mostly focuses on how the girls get by in a post-apocalyptic world. There aren't enough people left in the world to form any sort of military unit.
- Girls und Panzer is set In a World… where the sport of sensha-do (the Way of the Tank) is seen as a feminine martial art and stars the daughter of a prestigious sensha-do school.
- Played with in Gunslinger Girl. The girls are not involved with the military specifically but are still in government-related roles. They're all cute preteen girls, and the token oldest one can't be older than seventeen, who regularly wield guns... however, it's played up for drama, with the girls being Child Soldiers, with Dark and Troubled Pasts who all die, in a cynical world where the adults are also deeply troubled. The manga can't quite make up its mind on whether it's a deconstruction or not: the original anime is definitely deconstructive, but the second season Teatrino uses a "moe" art style that's even cuter than the manga's and plays this trope up more.
- Hetalia: Axis Powers was originally this using a mainly male cast. Early on it was meant to adapt World War II but with humanized countries. While most characters still wear military uniforms, the actual content of the series doesn't relate as much to war or the military as it once did.
- High School Fleet is about a training ship for the all-women's naval force, the Blue Mermaids.
- In Kurogane Pukapuka Tai, the heroines are part of the (nearly) all-female crew of a Japanese cruiser in World War II, who run into a German U-boat (crewed mostly by women) and later a British destroyer (captained entirely by women). Romantic entanglements ensue.
- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS featured this aesthetic, transposing the now-adult Magical Girls from the previous series into command positions of an almost-all-female paramilitary Space Police unit. This proved to be just a phase for the franchise, however, since Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force ditched most of the "moe" in "military moe" (and was eventually canceled), while subsequent anime and manga ditched the "military" part and went the "martial arts moe" route, focusing on the new generation of magical girls raised by the previous heroines.
- The Magnificent Kotobuki is about a squadron of 6 mercenary pilot girls who make their living taking to the skies and defending transport zeppelins from Sky Pirate attacks.
- In Mao-chan, the leaders of Japan's military branches fight adorable alien invaders with their even more adorable granddaughters.
- Panzerfraulein Alteseisen is about an all-female tank unit faced with the horrors of a Forever War between the Kingdom and The Federation. While it shares the same character designer and aesthetic from Girls und Panzer, it is not a happy story.
- Shirobako has an In-Universe example in Third Aerial Girls' Squad, a manga that the characters work on adapting into an anime during the show's second half. From what we know of it, it centers on a group of girls who pilot fighter planes from the seventies and prior in order to fight an alien invasion.
- Sound of the Sky follows a bugler in the all-women 1121st platoon of the Helvetian Army.
- Strike Witches is set in an alternate 1939, where aliens called the Neuroi have attacked the Earth, forcing the Earth's militaries to raise units of all-female magic users on broomsticks. The Striker Units they use prevent them from wearing any pants in combat.
- Mohiro Kitoh has written some works in this genre, believe it or not.
- The first such work by him was Owari to Hajimari no Miles, which takes place in a world where machines go after they die. It's centered on a teenage girl in a relationship with the spirit of the battleship Nagato.
- Kitoh's second attempt at this genre was Hayabusa-chan mo Tondemasu, which is about a girl who can turn into a Kawasaki Ki-43 fighter plane.
- Upotte!!: A Slice of Life manga and anime about anthropomorphized military firearms attending school.
- Warlords of Sigrdrifa: A multimedia project about a squadron of supernaturally enchanted girls and their planes fighting against a horrific monstrous invading force known as the Pillars, which cannot be harmed by any normal weapons, up to and including nukes.
Literature
- Girly Air Force is a solid example featuring Anthropomorphic Personifications of fighter jets from various nations battling an Alien Invasion. The jets use avatars of young cute girls to wander off-base and interact with people.
Video Games
- Armor Blitz has you commanding a group of cute tank girls against an enemy very similar to the Abyssals from KanColle.
- Azur Lane takes place in an alternate version of World War II where various warships from alternate versions of the Allied and Axis nations have taken the form of beautiful young women thanks to the alien technology of the Sirens. Interestingly, the first artbook implies that these shipgirls do indeed have memories of their original "lives" from "our" timeline.
- Girls' Frontline is about you working for a PMC and leading an army of cute android girls who are named after types of guns to fight in a Robot War.
- KanColle is a Card Battle Game featuring WWII-era warships in the shape of cute girls (primarily those of the Imperial Japanese Navy, though eventually a number of foreign ships were added as well, even those from relatively minor naval powers like Sweden and Australia).
- Valkyria Chronicles has a wide variety of Moe girls you can recruit into your squad. Its not exclusively moe girls, however, there are also men you can recruit, too.
- Victory Belles replicates the WWII-era warships in the shape of cute girls formula, but this time actually taking place during World War II! Not only are the individual personalities of the shipgirls (called Belles in-game) explored much more in-depth compared to most competitors, they're also voiced in their native languages.
- Warship Girls is a Card Battle Game featuring WWII-era warships in the shape of cute girls. If this sounds rather familiar, that's because Warship Girls was made as a direct response to KanColle's original lack of non-Japanese warships.
Visual Novels
- Grisaia Series visual novels (including the RPG gacha mobile game version of "Grisaia: Chronos Rebellion") features an abandoned school which becomes a base for female soldiers (who appear to be teenagers, preteens and young adults) of the defense unit SORD (Social Ops Research and Development) from Japan-America anti-terrorism organization CIRS (Central Intelligence Research Second). There's always a man who works as a handler and a soldier in every game.
Web Original
- Taiwanese digital artist Iron Lily
's works mostly featuring all-female Medieval era soldiers, drawn in Moe Puni Plush style. They are mostly well-known for the intricate details and historical accuracy of the armors and weapons the characters wore.
